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One year ago, my girlfriend Kristen (@kmarano) and I devised a plan to leave Toronto and travel the world. Beyond being completely taken out of our comfort zone, it meant leaving our careers, apartments, most material possessions, friends, family, and stability. Only the essentials were stuffed into our backpacks for our adventure—a few t-shirts, shorts, and plenty of underwear.

Kristen and I designed a disciplined savings plan to leave with a lump sum, started freelancing through a business I setup to make extra money, and developed a system that would allow us to work remotely no matter where we were in the world. We want this to be our lifestyle—exploring our planet and being productive at the same time.

We are now nearly a month into our new life, touring and working through South-East Asia. As of writing this post, we are nestled in the mountains of Northern Vietnam, just south of the Chinese border. The cost of living in most countries out here is phenomenally less than back home in Canada—with that in mind, Kris and I decided we would experiment with living on only $23 USD a day for the both of us. Really that’s $11.50 each. This budget is our daily allowance for transportation, food, entertainment, and accommodation. Here’s what we’ve learned so far:

Find your routine early

Travelling and working takes a lot of discipline. There is a careful balance between the amount of travelling you do, and the amount of work you take on. How you achieve that balance depends largely on routine. Neither of us were really morning people back home, but there’s certainly a huge difference in how we feel when waking up in the morning and choosing our own path everyday.

It took us about a week to find a good groove. We wake up early to go for a swim or do some quick exercises in our room--we’re both runners, but the hot Asian summer, coupled with intense smog, makes it difficult to find a good route. Exercise is followed by breakfast and then we hunker down for at least two to three hours of work—writing, responding to clients, research, etc. If we have set plans or a tour booked, we work around this schedule.

As Joel and Leo, founders of Buffer, put it in their regular Friday founders chat: we’re travelling to live, not travelling to visit. Our schedule isn’t dictated on being anywhere in a rush. If Kristen and I want to spend most of Tuesday working and then hit up a beach for the afternoon, we can.

Be Super Organized

This is unbelievably important. Spreadsheets, calendars, and project management software will keep you on track and accountable to your clients. Trello has been a godsend for us—we planned our entire trip on it, and now use it to manage all of our deliverables with clients. Kristen and I can make checklists of tasks to be completed, upload attachments and files, and assign deadlines or responsibilities to each other.

Find a good budgeting and effort template—or build your own—if you don’t already have one. It helps us properly measure the amount of time and budget we spend on everything we do. If you want to invest in apps that do this for you, by all means do it—I just find comfort in a good old spreadsheet. A quick Google search will generate a number of automated spreadsheet templates that can be customized.

We work when our clients sleep. When they wake up in the morning and check their inboxes, our work is waiting for them. We have to spend a bit of time calculating the appropriate schedule for Skype sessions or Google hangouts—we’re ahead of everyone, but it’s kind of neat being in the future.

Share meals

I read David B. Agus’ A Short Guide To A Long Life a few months before we left. It’s a great short read on sixty-five quick rules encouraging people to be preventative of potential future ailments. Dr. Agus suggests eating only one serving of a meal, and being mindful of portions. I cooked almost five nights a week at home, but on the road we haven’t found accommodation with a kitchen that fits our budget.

Sharing meals also helps keep us within our daily budget. Food can be incredibly cheap here in Asia, and really healthy if you’re careful. Noodles, rice, protein, and vegetables are a component of every meal. In Vietnam, you can enjoy a full meal for two with drinks for around $5 or less. We share plates—there are big portions here—and still don’t sacrifice our health or our wallets. The meals themselves are light, and you feel satisfied but not heavy. Two heaping bowls of Pho with two ice cold bottles of Tiger beer ran us $3.80 all in.

Admittedly, the craving for comforts from home will creep up once in a while, and we treat ourselves when needed. Be careful, it’s the Western comforts that can dry up your wallet. We are starting to miss good pasta and snacks..

Walk a lot

This is something we did a lot of back home, too. We both have Fitbits and are tracking our daily steps and calories burned. Since arriving in Vietnam, I’ve walked a total of 214,776 steps—that averages out to almost 9,000 steps a day.

Taxis are cheap, as are public busses and scooters, but you see so much more when you’re on the ground stomping through the cities and jungles. If I can’t get a normal amount of exercising in on any given day, at least I know walking a few kilometres will keep my heart rate up and body healthy. With more and more people abstaining from walking unless they have a purpose, Kris and I create plenty of reasons to walk everywhere. Sometimes, it’s just the thrill of getting our steps in for our Fitbits.

We only do tours unless we absolutely have to—like trekking 10KM over five different elevations in the Vietnamese jungle. Apart from those experiences, we’ll grab a map and chart our own route.

Travel by hashtag

Instagram has been a great way for us to post photos and videos of our trip. I like to make 15-second videos of each destination we visit. When we arrive at a new city, we look up the Instagram hashtags people might be using to get a sense of sights, restaurants, or experiences we might be interested in.

Stunning food pictures help us decide what we might want to eat, and questions about where to go for the best anything are a comment away. The regular deluge of information on travel sites or wikis are good, but require more effort to summarize and distill down to the must-do moments.

Take advantage of free Wifi

Asia is more connected to reliable and speedy Wifi in nearly every location than in North America. Coffee shops, hotel lobbies, hostels, bus stations, airports, restaurants, and even roadside vendors. I’ve found Vietnam to have better Internet access than my neighbourhood in the heart of downtown Toronto.

Our office can be anywhere

With reliable Wifi and a comfortable place to work, our office can be anywhere—the beach, a high-rise rooftop looking over Hanoi, or café in the clouds surrounded by lush green mountains.

A good cup of coffee, or a cheap glass of cold beer, is all we need to get working. It’s probably the most rewarding part of this entire experience.